


Classical Mechanics

by Anonymous



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: College, Homesickness, M/M, Pre-Slash, Tony Stark becomes a guest lecturer at Peter Parker's college, Tony Stark is overinvested in Peter's life and I'm here for it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2020-09-07 00:10:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20300236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The hallway has mostly emptied out by the time he makes it close to the door, which he opens as quietly an unobtrusively as he can, slipping inside and slinking to the first open desk he can find. As it turns out, all his efforts to be subtle are utterly useless, because before he even sits down a suspiciously familiar voice stops talking mid-sentence and greets him by name.“Mr. Parker, glad you could make it,” Mr. Stark says, and Peter (metaphorically) shits himself.





	1. Chapter 1

There’s no reason for a hallway to be this damn long, Peter thinks to himself as he sidesteps another group of people walking too slow. 

If he could run at full speed, he could get to class in a few seconds, probably - but the hallway is crowded with people, all of them moving too slow, and even if it weren’t Peter probably shouldn’t running anywhere at full speed without his mask on, anyway.

So he resigns himself to being late to the very first session of his Classical Mechanics II lecture. And possibly every following session as well, unless he can find a shortcut that isn’t clogged with other people at this time of day. 

_Gonna make an awesome first impression there, Peter_. 

He wishes he had some idea who the professor was; maybe he’ll be lucky and it's someone he’s already met at one of the orientation events. But all it had said on his class grid was “Instructor: TBD” when he’d checked it last night.

He just hopes that whoever it is will understand that it’s not his fault that the scheduling algorithm hates him and assigned him one lecture right after the other on literal opposite sides of the campus.

The hallway has mostly emptied out by the time he makes it close to the door, which he opens as quietly an unobtrusively as he can, slipping inside and slinking to the first open desk he can find. As it turns out, all his efforts to be subtle are utterly useless, because before he even sits down a suspiciously familiar voice stops talking mid-sentence and greets him by name.

“Mr. Parker, glad you could make it,” Mr. Stark says, and Peter (metaphorically) shits himself.

Peter slides down into his seat. 

“Sorry, sir,” he says.

If Peter were anyone else, he’d be out of breath right now, ruffled and red-faced - the other students might notice that and assume he ran here as fast as he could. But of course, Peter is not anyone else. He’s not breathing hard in the least. They probably think he's just some jerk that didn't bother to get to class on time.

A class being taught by _Mr. Stark_, no less.

Mr. Stark stares at him for another beat, and Peter wishes his desk would come to life and swallow him. Weirder stuff than that has happened to him before. Or aliens. Aliens could attack Cambridge right now, and maybe one of them would fling him so hard he would drift off into space, never to be seen or heard from again.

Neither of those things happen though, because Peter has the worst luck.

Mr. Stark carries on with his introduction, which isn’t really an introduction at all - it’s not like there’s a single person in the room who doesn’t already know who he is. Most of the class seems to be caught in rapt attention, although Peter does catch a few dirty looks aimed his way - either because he was late, or because Mr. Stark knows him by name.

All in all, it’s a great start to his first semester of college.

He spends most of the lecture with his head caught in an endless loop of questions. Why was Mr. Stark here in Boston? Why was Mr. Stark teaching Classical Mechanics II, of all things? 

Peter could see him maybe wanting to take on a guest lecture role at the school - he always seemed to enjoy teaching Peter stuff for his internship, so that made sense, but Peter would’ve assumed he’d take on one of the upper level courses - not a mid-level foundational class most students took as sophomores or juniors. The only reason Peter was here at all was because he’d managed to test out of 8.01 and 8.02. 

The rest of class passes by in a blur. Mr. Stark introduces their TAs and runs through a quick couple of example problems. Peter answers a question correctly, which garners almost no response from Mr. Stark, who's already moved on.

“Alright, I’ve been told I’m supposed to end lecture a little early to leave time for questions. So hit me, whatcha got?”

A kid in the third row raises his hand. 

“What’s the highest number of Gs you’ve pulled in the suit?”

“Questions about the course material,” Mr. Stark clarifies, one side of his mouth quirking up in a grin. He waits for a few moments, but no one else pipes up. “Okay, cool. Assignments are posted wherever you usually find that stuff. If you can’t find it, ask one of our lovely TAs.”

Mr. Stark waves a hand in dismissal and everyone starts to pack up, murmured conversations starting up all around Peter, most of them speculating on what the rest of the semester was going to be like, and if Mr. Stark was actually going to stick around for the whole thing or leave most of it to the TAs.

The hushed conversations immediately cease when Mr. Stark looks up and says, “Peter, you got a minute to stick around after class?”

All eyes turn to Peter, whose throat has gone dry. He nods mutely.

Peter swallows repeatedly, trying to work some moisture back into his throat as everyone else files out of the room. 

As soon as they’re alone, he speaks up. “Mr. Stark, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to - ”

“Woah, slow down. Is this about coming in late?”

“Yes?”

Mr. Stark rolls his eyes. “I’d prefer if you didn’t make a habit of it, but I don’t actually care that much. I wanted to see if you were free to come have lunch with me - catch up, tell me all about how college life is treating you?”

“Oh.”

“Gonna have to give me a yes or a no here, kid. Are you free, or do you have stuff to do right now?”

“No. No I mean, yeah I’m free. No stuff to do.”

“I think I’m starting to understand the need for the CI requirement.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it. Hey, what do you want to eat? You’re the one surviving on dining hall food, so it’s your choice.”

“Anywhere is good.”

As soon as they step out of the building - and to be honest, even before that - Peter can feel people watching them. He’d like to pretend he’s just as unruffled by the attention as Mr. Stark seems to be, or better yet, if he actually _was_ as unruffled by it as Mr. Stark, but he’s not. 

He’s hyperaware of every step. Are they walking too close? How close is too close? Is it weird that their strides are matching up? _Stop being weird, Peter, _he tries to tell himself. It doesn’t work.

The place Mr. Stark takes him to looks casual, at least, and a table tucked away near the back is found for them quickly enough. 

“So, talk. Tell me everything. How’s dorm life treating you?”

“Good, yeah it’s great.”

Peter is almost certain Mr. Stark had something to do with him getting a single as a freshman, but Mr. Stark hasn’t said anything about it and Peter still isn’t sure how to bring it up.

“Usually I can’t get you to shut up. Are you reinventing yourself for college or should I be concerned about some kind of mind-control situation here?”

Peter frowns. “I’m not being mind-controlled. I’m just - what are you doing here?”

Whoops. That hadn’t come out right. He didn’t mean to make it sound like he wasn't happy Mr. Stark was in Boston; because he definitely is. But he’s still at a loss as to why the man is here at all, teaching a mid-level physics class. Surely he's got more important stuff to be doing with his time.

Mr. Stark seems just as taken aback by Peter’s question as Peter is by the way the question had come out.

“Is it too weird, me being here?” Mr. Stark asks. “You always seemed to like hanging out in the lab together, I thought this would be more of the same. Except with some other people around too and an actual curriculum I’m supposed to be covering.”

“Wait, you signed up to teach the class because you knew I was in it?”

“Yes,” Mr. Stark says, like it should be obvious.

“But you live in New York.”

“That’s what planes are for, kid. I have a couple of those. You’ve even been on one or two of them. Besides, it’s only two days a week, and the TAs can handle recitations and the other grunt work.”

“Okay, but like, why? Not that I’m not happy you’re here!” he’s quick to add this time. “But you have a whole company and the team and stuff going on back in New York.”

Their food arrives just then - simple stuff, burgers and fries, but it all smells and looks amazing. Peter digs in, suddenly starving. Mr. Stark eats at a more sedate pace, picking at his fries contemplatively.

“True, flying out here twice a week would normally put a crimp in my schedule, but I found myself with some extra free time since my one and only intern quit on me.”

Peter swallows, gulping down some water before he speaks. “I didn’t quit!”

“Fine, but you went from year-round to summer only. Seriously, is the class thing going to be weird? I can tell them nevermind if you're not okay with it. I’m sure I can find an acceptable replacement pretty quick if I need to.”

“No, don’t quit. It’s fine. It’s great, actually.” 

Peter doesn’t mean for his face to break out into a goofy smile, but he can’t actually help it as the reality finally starts to sink in. He’s gonna get to see Mr. Stark twice a week, every week, for the _entire semester_.

This is awesome.

The thing is, he misses seeing May every day; misses swinging through the streets of New York. 

Misses being recognized in a sort of casual way while he’s out on patrol - the people of Boston have seen Spider-Man on the news, but they’re not used to seeing him in person in a day-to-day kind of way, not yet, not the way people in Queens were.

He misses his friends, and his neighborhood, and stopping by the tower whenever he felt like it, either to see if Mr. Stark was around or just to hang out in the lab if he wasn't.

“It’s tough. Being away from home for the first time,” Mr. Stark says, as if reading his mind.

“Was it tough for you, when you came out here for school?”

“Boston wasn’t tough, no - by the time I got here I’d already been away at boarding school for a couple years. Boarding school though, that was tough. It’s never easy, not for anyone. Anyone who says it is is probably lying.”

Peter fidgets, pursing his lips. He glances down at his empty plate. 

“Thanks,” he says.

Talking gets easier, after that, the conversation meandering through Peter’s class schedule, how he's liking Boston, and then back around to the syllabus for CMII - at which point Mr. Stark teases him pretty roundly for not paying attention to the lecture.

“Seriously? How are you gonna be my star student if you’re showing up late and not paying attention in class? Keep it up and I’m assigning you detention.”

Peter scoffs. “It’s college, Mr. Stark, not high school. You can’t actually assign me detention.”

“Watch me.”

Peter’s not actually sure if he’s kidding. If anyone could find a way, Mr. Stark probably could. He opts not to push his luck any further. They finish lunch together, and Mr. Stark heads off back to New York. 

Peter is only a little bit homesick at watching him leave - okay maybe a lot homesick. He’s never lived away from home before, and he's been talking to May practically every other day, pathetically glad he doesn’t have a roommate to judge him for being so attached. 

Knowing he’s going see Mr. Stark every few days means the world though - and he suspects Mr. Stark might know it, too. He’s already offered to fly Peter home for weekend visits, if Peter wants. He’s sorely tempted to take Mr. Stark up on it, as bad an idea as he knows it would be, so soon. He’s never going to learn to get used to living in this city if he keeps running home at every opportunity, much as he might want to. 

He makes it through the next two days without any further surprises, and thanks to some careful legwork over the weekend, he’s able to take a shortcut that gets him to Mr. Stark’s next lecture a whole five minutes early.

He slides into a seat with a sigh of relief and opens up his notebook.

Mr. Stark walks in with barely a minute to spare, clocking Peter at the front of the class with a twitch of his lips.

“Glad to see everyone made it on time. Actually, we seem to have a few more students today than last week.” It’s true. At a glance, the class is nearly twice the size as it had been the week before. “I hate to do this, you all know how much I enjoy a big audience - ” there’s some stifled laughter at that “ - but if you’re not actually registered for the class, you gotta go.”

There’s a bit of grumbling, but a good number of people trail out through the door. Mr. Stark claps his hands together.

“Ready everyone?”

A murmur of assent ripples through the room. 

“Cool. Then let’s get started.”  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like playing around with this AU, so might keep adding bits and pieces to it here and there.

“A-and, done!” Tony finishes off the last line of the equation with a flourish and turns back towards the room. “We’re one step closer to PLA. Any questions?” 

Every hand in the room goes up. Well, almost every hand. Peter is busy frowning at the board, and Matheson… Mattson? Mattersen, maybe? Whatever, the kid in the gray hoodie - looks like she’s asleep again. 

Tony’s aim hits true, the stubby piece of chalk glancing off of the leg of the desk. She startles at the sound and sits up, blinking awake.

“Questions about what’s on the board?” Tony reiterates, since that’s still sometimes a stumbling block.

Every hand stays up. Gray hoodie slowly raises her hand too. And so does Peter. Tony glances over at Peter with a small frown, one eyebrow quirking up in question.

“You skipped like three steps,” Peter says, gesturing at the board. “I think that’s why we’re all confused.”

“Yeah, I skipped over some of the easy stuff.”

“It’s Classical Mechanics II, Mr. Stark. You’re supposed to be teaching us how to do the easy stuff.”

A nervous-sounding laugh ripples across the room.

“Parker gets detention for being a smartass.” More laughter, slightly less nervous this time. “You also just volunteered yourself to be my assistant for the day. Get up here and erase the board.”

Tony walks over to the side of the room and pulls himself up to sit on the window ledge, grinning as Peter rolls his eyes and takes his spot at the front of the class. Tony mentally rewinds back to the equation of motion and starts from the beginning, talking his way through each step and directing Peter as he writes it all out on the board.

When they’re done this time, Peter sets the chalk down and wipes his palms down the front of his jeans, leaving faint white smudges in their wake.

“Can I sit down now?” he asks.

“Fine,” Tony says, waving a hand at him in dismissal. “Okay guys, raise your hands if you’re still confused.”

A couple of hands go up, but it’s a lot fewer than last time. So maybe Peter had a point earlier. Tony still plans on making him beat erasers together or something after class, just because he’s pretty sure he can. He knows Peter doesn’t have another class to get to until mid-afternoon today, anyway.

Tony takes a couple questions from the room - they’re good questions, and it’s almost fun to talk through the answers, watching for the spark of understanding to spread from one face to the next. Mattison has a great question about centripetal force that sends Tony off on a tangent that may or may not jump ahead into the material meant for next week, he’s not sure - at least until a subtle buzzing from his watch lets him know they’re about to run over.

“We’ll pick up next week with the principle of least action and Lagrange and all that good stuff. If you still have questions, I’ve been told that office hours are a thing I’m supposed to be doing, so I’ll be around from two to four this afternoon. Capisce?”

There’s a murmur of assent from the class as they start to pack up. 

Predictably enough, Peter hangs back as the rest of the class files out the door. 

“You do know you can’t actually assign me detention, right? ‘Cause we’ve talked about this,” he says, once the room is mostly empty. “I can’t make it to office hours, by the way. I’ve got class.”

“I know. Hey, you hungry? I figured we could grab lunch again.”

Peter shifts on his feet. “You don’t take any of the other students out to lunch.”

“No, but I take all of my interns out for lunch.”

“I thought I was your only intern.”

“Exactly, so I’m batting a thousand - unless you’re ditching me because you’ve got something better to do?”

“No! No, lunch is good,” Peter says with a small grin.

They walk over to a small cafe nearby and Tony successfully wheedles Peter into doubling his order with the logic that he can save any leftovers for dinner or a late night snack, if there are any. Tony already has fairly comprehensive data on the kid’s metabolism and the estimated caloric intake necessary for his nightly web slinging. There won’t be any leftovers.

“You have a mini fridge, right?” Tony asks anyway.

“Yes, I have a mini fridge. And a microwave, and a toaster, and that crazy nice ergonomic desk chair you sent Happy all the way up here to deliver last week. No one who’s seen my room believes me when I tell them I’m on a scholarship, by the way.”

Tony shrugs.

“Also,” Peter continues, “we’re not allowed to have toasters or microwaves in our rooms, ‘cause they’re a fire hazard.”

“I trust you with things a whole lot more dangerous than a toaster.”

“Okay, but Housing and Residential Services doesn’t, and they’re kind of in charge of where I live.”

“You should think about living off campus next year. I’ll find you someplace that’ll allow you to have as many fire hazards as you want.”

“Can I get at least a couple more weeks into my first semester here before you and May start planning out sophomore year?”

Tony concedes, for now. It wouldn’t hurt to start looking. Peter doesn’t need to know, not if all he’s doing is looking.

As predicted, Peter polishes off both plates in the time it takes Tony to finish his one.

The kid looks down at the table, seeming surprised.

“Oh.”

“You want to get something else to go?” Tony offers.

“No, that’s okay. You know I have a meal plan, right? It’s not like I’m going to starve if you don’t feed me, Mr. Stark.” Peter’s eyes narrow. “Wait, May didn’t make you promise to check up on me or something like that, did she?”

She hadn’t, and Tony is slightly offended that that’s the first explanation Peter jumps to.

“What, I can’t just check up on you because I want to check up on you?”

Peter looks like he wants to shake his head, or possibly nod - it’s hard to tell.

“So what’d you need to ask me about at office hours?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing. I just didn’t want you to think I was skipping for no reason.”

“Someone did explain to you at some point that those are optional, right? At least, they are for students. I still have to be there,” Tony adds with no small amount of chagrin.

“Did someone explain to you at any point that teaching would involve like, actually dealing with students sometimes?”

“I did, in fact, figure that part out on my own.”

“Uh huh.”

“Your next class starts at one-thirty right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because we’re going back to the classroom and I’m gonna make you beat erasers until then.”

Peter’s mouth falls open. “You’re joking,” he says, but he sounds just the slightest bit unsure about it.

“Am I?”

Tony doesn’t actually make the kid beat erasers, although it is tempting to try, just for the hell of it. To see if he actually would, if Tony told him to in a firm enough tone. 

Instead they go back to the office that apparently belongs to Tony for the semester - a room with a desk and one window and far too many filing cabinets for such a small space. Peter breezes through a good chunk of his pset while Tony glances through the material he’s supposed to be covering in the next lecture.

“No offence Mr. Stark, but if this is your idea of detention you’re gonna have a whole lot of issues with classroom management this semester,” Peter says as he’s packing up to head to his next class.

“Ah yes, those notoriously rowdy MIT undergrads. How ever will I cope?”

“I’m just saying - ”

“They might ban together and engineer a way to raise their hands faster in class, and then I’ll be in some real trouble. I might need Spider-Man to come protect me. I hear he’s in Boston now.”

Whoops, okay Peter actually looks annoyed at that. 

He’s still a little tetchy about anyone making the connection between his move and Spider-Man’s sudden relocation, Tony guesses. As if Tony hasn’t intentionally planted a few misleading news reports here and there to throw people off of the exact timing of Spider-Man’s move.

“I could make you write ‘I will not sass Professor Stark’ a hundred times, if it would make you feel better about my classroom management skills.”

Peter pauses at the door. “You don’t actually expect me to call you Professor Stark, do you?”

Okay so, bringing up the professor thing was clearly a mistake. Not because of the way Peter is looking at him like he’s turned into some sort of weird mutant (which, ironic, considering) - he’d expected that. But because of the way Peter’s voice saying the words _Professor Stark_ keeps echoing around in his head. Tony has the distinct sense he isn’t supposed to like that as much as he does.

Peter is still standing there, waiting.

“All my other students do,” Tony points out.

“Yeah, what about your other interns?”

Tony has to grin; one point to Peter. 

“Get to class, kid.”  



	3. Chapter 3

Peter isn’t sure how or when he got elected the unofficial leader of this study group, but the decision had apparently been unanimous. Everyone around the table is looking at him, like they’re waiting for him to tell them what to do.

“So… did we want to start with the lecture notes or the problem sets first?” he says.

“I say we should start with whatever we think is most likely to be on the midterm,” Rafa says slowly, and a couple of people nod.

Everyone is still staring at Peter.

It dawns on him that they expect him to have some kind of insider info. He doesn’t. Mr. Stark would never just give him the answers like that, and even if he would, Peter is pretty sure Mr. Stark isn’t the one coming up with the test anyway. Or grading it, for that matter.

“Um. I don’t actually know what’s going to be on the midterm.”

“He hasn’t said anything? C’mon, think,” Gwen says from across the table.

Peter shakes his head - he’s not sure what else he can say, really. 

“Maybe we should just start with the lecture notes and go from there.”

Thankfully, everyone seems willing to accept that suggestion, even if they’re still unconvinced about what he does or doesn’t know about the upcoming test. They work for a while, talking over the examples from class, passing notebooks back and forth across the table to crossexamine one another’s work. 

They look at a couple variations of the same problems, similar ones from the textbook, then move on to the problem set that’s due in two weeks. 

Everyone still looks at Peter occasionally like they expect him to have the answers, but it’s not quite as bad now that everyone is working and talking amongst themselves. People start to trickle away one by one after about an hour, heading off to dinner or club meetings or whatever else, until Peter and Gwen are the only two left.

“I really don’t know what’s gonna be on the test,” Peter feels compelled to repeat. It feels important for some reason that at least one person understands he’s not like, getting some unfair advantage in class.

Gwen pauses packing up her stuff to eye him for a moment.

“I know.”

“You do?”

She shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Everyone just thinks I do because of the internship thing.”

“....Yeah.” She sounds a lot less convinced this time.

“What?” Peter asks.

“Mostly yeah, it’s the internship thing.”

Peter freezes. _Mostly?_ Does that mean some of them suspect something about Peter’s alter ego? Oh god. He should’ve stayed in New York for school. It was just too obvious, showing up in Boston right at the start of the school term, and anyone could make the connection to - 

“There’s sort of a bet going around whether or not you two are screwing,” Gwen says.

That’s - wait. What.

Peter has to scrub back and replay what Gwen said what feels like a couple dozen times before the words make sense - and even then they don’t really make sense. Screwing? Screwing as in _screwing_-screwing? With Mr. Stark?

Gwen must be able to tell he’s freaking out, because she lets out a nervous laugh.

“Dude, calm down. It’s a joke, I don’t think anyone really believes it. I mean, if it were true it’d be a massive violation of the ethics code and I’d kind of hope everyone would take it a bit more seriously. People just like to talk, you know.”

No, Peter doesn’t know.

“We’re not,” he says.

Gwen rolls her eyes. “I _know_. If Tony Stark wanted to fly to Boston for a booty call he could do it without spending four hours in a classroom every week teaching Lagrangian Mechanics to a bunch of undergrads. It’s not like he needs an excuse to come out here.”

Peter’s not sure how to react to the fact that that’s apparently her main reason for thinking he and Mr. Stark aren’t having sex. 

(Having sex _with Mr. Stark_. People talking about the possibility of him _having sex with Mr. Stark_.)

“It isn’t an excuse,” Peter says, then rushes to continue when he realizes what he’s implying, “I’m not a booty call.”

Okay that - actually sounded even worse. 

Peter claps his hands over his face. Maybe he can just drop the class. Maybe he can drop all of his classes and never look anyone in the eyes ever again. That wouldn’t be weird, right? There were some really good schools back in New York.

There were probably really good schools in Timbuktu.

“Of course not,” Gwen says.

She has the audacity to look amused, as if she hasn’t just single-handedly ruined Peter’s chances at behaving anywhere near halfway normal the next time he sees Mr. Stark, which is - oh yeah. Tonight.

In like thirty minutes.

Shit.

Peter says goodbye to Gwen as they pass by her dorm, and picks up the pace a bit as he heads back to his own room to drop off his books and continue to quietly freak out.

He pulls his mask out from where it’s shoved at the back of his closet and puts it on.

“Um, Karen?”

“Hello, Peter. How was your study group?”

“Great, it was great. Do you know if Mr. Stark expects me to like, change or something?” Peter looks at himself in the full length mirror stuck on the back of the closet door. The mask plus a t-shirt, hoodie and jeans is... definitely a look.

“He didn’t say. Would you like me to ask?”

“No! No, that’s okay.”

He’ll just change into a clean shirt. It’ll be fine. Mr. Stark probably would’ve said something if he expected Peter to dress up. Peter shakes his head. Why is he suddenly treating this like it’s a date or something?

Of course, he knows why. And it’s not just because of the things Gwen said, if he’s being honest.

He makes it to the address Karen had given him earlier with barely two minutes to spare, staring up at the entrance to a very fancy looking highrise hotel. The lady at the front desk greets him with a warm smile, handing over a key card and gesturing towards the elevators off to the left. 

Some part of Peter’s brain is very much aware that even though this is a perfectly innocent dinner, there are a whole lot of aspects that make it really not look that way. Isn’t this how escorts did things? Peter doesn’t know, but he’s seen movies where it works pretty much exactly like this. 

He thanks the front desk lady and heads over to the elevator, trying his best not to think about what any of this does or doesn’t look like.

Mr. Stark answers the door and waves Peter inside without a word, since he’s on the phone with someone. Peter isn’t sure who with or what it’s about, but there’s a lot of eye-rolling and terse comments on Mr. Stark’s end of things.

Peter shrugs off his backpack and drops it on a chair nearby, looking around. The suite is huge, with windows looking out over the Charles. 

If he were some kind of high-end escort or in Gwen’s delicate choice of words - a booty call, he’d probably head straight for the bedroom, which he catches a glimpse of through an open door just across the room. The bed is unmade, he can’t help but notice. Then again, if that’s why he was here he’d also probably be wearing something a little sexier than navy cotton boxers underneath his jeans. 

Not that Peter actually owns any boxers that he’d classify as sexy.

And not that Mr. Stark would ever know or have any reason to care about Peter’s underwear, either.

“Food should be here any minute,” Mr. Stark says, hanging up. “You hungry?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Good. Hope you like steak. If you don’t, we can have them send up something else.”

“Nope - no, steak is good. I like meat.” Peter clamps his mouth shut. 

_I like meat?_ Really?

_Get it together Parker_, he tells himself. Thankfully Mr. Stark seems to be oblivious to Peter’s sudden lack of normal human conversation skills.

“So, how’re classes going? Any duds, any breakaway favorites - other than mine?”

“No, yours is the only real dud,” Peter replies, before he can think the better of it. Whoops. It’s like a nervous tick; he gets cheeky when he’s amped up.

Mr. Stark claps a hand one hand to his chest. “I’m wounded. And coming from my favorite student, too.”

“I thought Diaz was your favorite. You said so last week.”

“Who’s Diaz?”

“Third row? Green backpack?”

Mr. Stark shakes his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

The food arrives a few minutes later, served up from a cart full of glistening silver and porcelain. Peter does his best to pretend this is entirely normal, sitting in a fancy penthouse suite being served food by a guy in a sharp looking uniform.

The guy leaves with his cart, and Peter only hesitates the briefest moment before digging in. The steak is delicious, of course, but even the salad and the green beans taste amazing after another week of generally somewhat soggy dorm food.

They talk between bites - about Peter’s other classes, about suit upgrades and patrols and what’s going on back at the compound this week. 

As nice as going out to lunch with Mr. Stark was sometimes, it was ten times better to be able to talk in private, where Peter didn’t have to split himself in two, tucking away all the superhero parts of his life.

Mr. Stark asks about his plans for wintersession, and next semester.

“Is it - are you asking because…?” Peter stalls out, not sure how to ask. This was a one-semester thing, right? Just until he was adjusted to living in Boston. Mr. Stark wasn’t really planning to pick up a class here every semester until Peter graduated, was he?

“No reason.”

Uh huh. So, maybe he was.

“You know you don’t have to do that. I mean, you don’t have to teach a class here just to come visit. If you wanted to.” 

“Oh I know. The teaching gig is actually pretty fun, nurturing young minds and all that. I don’t know what the other faculty are complaining about, it’s been great.”

_Grading, probably_, Peter thinks but doesn’t say. Also probably a lot of other institutional bureaucracy stuff that Mr. Stark very conveniently doesn’t seem to have to worry about.

“You just like it because everyone keeps asking you to autograph their psets,” Peter says.

“Did you bring yours? I’ve got to be honest, I was a little offended you hadn’t asked, but if you were just waiting for the right moment - ”

“I’m not asking you to sign my homework. If I tried to sell it it’d technically be an academic honesty violation, and I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“Hmm, good point.”

Peter heads out not long after, turning down Mr. Stark’s offer to call him a car. He doesn’t mind the walk, and the last thing he needs is to be dropped off right in front of his dorm by one of Mr. Stark’s sleek, attention-grabbing cars. He’d never hear the end of it, if anyone saw.

*

The midterm sucks. 

Peter is pretty sure he did well on it regardless, but it still feels like it takes forever, and besides, he’ll take a two-hour class with Mr. Stark over a two-hour test any day. But he makes it through, as does the rest of the class, grumbling and exhausted, one or two of them shooting dirty looks Peter’s way for some reason he can’t figure out.

“I take it back,” Gwen says when they meet up in the hall outside, afterward. “If you two aren’t banging, maybe you should be.”

“What?”

“I’m just saying, maybe that would’ve been easier on all of us if Professor Stark was in a better mood.”

“We’re not - ” Peter pulls her into an alcove, lowering his voice. “We’re not banging.”

“I know, that’s what I’m saying. Maybe you should.”

Peter shakes his head. He still can’t tell if she’s joking or not. “Weren’t you the one pointing out it’d be a huge ethical violation?”

“Oh totally. But I care about that a lot less if it means we don’t have to go through something like that again during finals.”

“Mr. Stark didn’t write the test.”

“Yeah, but he has to have some amount of influence over what’s on it, even if he’s not doing the grunt work of coming up with the questions himself. Besides, I’m kidding. Well, mostly,” she adds, shooting him a sidelong look.

Peter’s not sure what Gwen is basing her speculation on, or if she just enjoys winding him up because she can tell how easily it affects him. Given all the superhero secrets he has to keep though, it really seems like he should be better at keeping a poker face by now. 

But apparently not.

Maybe that’s it though - to anyone else, Peter and Mr. Stark seem to spend a lot of time together, meeting up outside of class, talking privately. Without knowing that they’re talking about superhero stuff, well, people were bound to speculate pretty wildly.

Peter rolls his eyes at the look Gwen is giving him.

“Mr. Stark could have anyone on campus, if he wanted,” Peter says. “I don’t know why you think I’d have any kind of special influence anyway. I’m just his intern.”

“Sure. You know Stark Industries employs literally hundreds of interns worldwide every year, right?”

“Exactly!”

“And not a single one - other than you, has ever been Tony’s Stark’s _personal _intern?”

“Um. Well yeah, but that’s just - ” 

Peter struggles to think of a reasonable explanation that doesn’t involve radioactive spider bites and homemade webshooters. Gwen looks like she’s trying to suppress a grin, and not really succeeding.

“It’s okay, Peter. I’m not fishing for anything, I swear, I’m just saying you can give up the ‘who me?’ act. Everyone can tell he adores you. As an intern, or otherwise...”

Peter buries his face in his hands.  
  
“Oh my god, please stop.”  
  



	4. Chapter 4

Tony stays in Boston Tuesday night - not because he has to, but because Peter still has a class on Wednesday morning before he’s done for Thanksgiving break. For some unfathomable reason, Peter refuses to skip, and he’d nearly had some kind of fit when Tony had suggested sending the jet back to make two trips, one on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday. Tony still isn’t sure what had been wrong with that suggestion.

So: Tony stays in town Tuesday night, Peter goes to his Wednesday class like a good little boy scout, and no one ends up taking Amtrak back to New York. (Seriously, kid. Fucking _Amtrak?_)

Anyway, win win.

When Tony picks him up on Wednesday afternoon, Peter climbs into the car with a backpack and nothing else. 

“Traveling light?”

“Uh, yeah. I have clothes and stuff at home already anyway.”

Tony would be willing to bet his right gauntlet that the kid has his suit squirreled away in there. His multimillion-dollar one-of-a-kind suit, shoved in the bottom of a Jansport backpack with long-forgotten granola bar wrappers and a bunch of pens missing their caps, probably. 

It’s not that Tony’s worried about the suit getting banged up - he has more than enough confidence in his own work for that, and the suit had been designed to withstand far worse than getting stuffed in a backpack, after all. But it still seems a little pedestrian. Like if danger struck, Peter would be ducking into a phone booth a la Clark Kent. Which would be a problem, since phone booths weren’t so much a thing anymore.

Then again, the case Tony gave the kid isn’t exactly all that subtle, he supposes.

“Thanks for letting me hitch a ride, Mr. Stark. I guess it worked out pretty well after all, with your meeting getting pushed back like that.”

Right. Tony’s imaginary Wednesday morning meeting.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony says, waving a hand in dismissal. “You and May have any big holiday plans?”

Peter shakes his head. “Nah, not really. We basically spend Thanksgiving stuffing our faces and watching movies. It’s just us, so.”

The rest of the sentence goes unsaid. There’s no big family get together for the Parkers, because there’s no big family to get together. It seems wrong. Surely Peter should be surrounded by people at a table groaning with food, the general din of conversations overlapping around him as everyone catches up.

Thanksgiving at Casa Parker still sounds nice though, in an understated, quiet sort of way.

The jet’s ready by the time they arrive, and it never really gets old - watching Peter go all wide-eyed and overawed at being driven directly out onto the tarmac to board the plane, instead of going through gen-pop security and waiting around on plastic chairs.

Tony pours himself a vodka tonic as soon as they’re airborne, and offers Peter the same.

Peter shakes his head and grins like it’s a joke.

“No thanks, Mr. Stark.”

“You sure?”

“You do know I’m not old enough to drink, right?”

“You do know you’re in college and you’re not supposed to care, right?” Tony fires back. “C’mon, you’ve been at school almost a whole semester already, don’t tell me you haven’t gotten wasted and thrown up somewhere embarrassing yet.”

“I haven’t.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“Any particular reason you follow every rule unless I’m specifically the one asking you not to do something?”

“Um.” Peter has the good grace to look abashed, which is something, Tony supposes, but it only lasts for half a second before Peter glances back up. “Because you let me get away with it?”

Well, he’s not wrong.

*

Thanksgiving with Rhodey’s family goes off without a hitch, the table piled high with amazing food, everyone swapping stories - at least half of them about people Tony is pretty sure he’s never heard of but pretends otherwise. 

Rhodey’s niece Teresa is applying to UCLA, flush with equal measures of excitement and nerves. She can’t seem to stop talking about it, and if the way Rhodey brags about her is any indication, she shouldn’t have any trouble getting in. 

It’s already late by the time they get to dessert, Tony trying (futilely) to waive off the offer of a slice of pie when FRIDAY’s alarms go off.

Peter’s suit has taken damage. 

Correction: _Peter_ has taken damage.

Tony ducks into the bathroom to pull up the video log, although there isn’t much to see. There’s a guy with a gun, and Peter’s outstretched hand. There’s Peter’s voice, trying to calm the guy down for some fucking reason instead of just webbing the weapon away. There’s the unmistakable _crack_ of a gunshot.

Rhodey catches him on the way out the door. “Tones, hold up. What is it?”

“It’s fine. It’s fine, but I gotta go.”

“You need me to come out?”

“No, I got it. It’s the kid.”

Rhodey gives him a quick nod. “Be careful.”

“Always am,” Tony fires back, which earns him a snort of laughter and an eyeroll.

FRIDAY has Peter’s vitals pulled up on the display the moment Tony steps into the suit. Peter’s doing alright, Tony tells himself. He’s losing blood and having trouble keeping his feet underneath him, but he’s still conscious and his heartbeat is holding steady. For now.

Tony redirects every ounce of power into the thrusters.

When he arrives on scene, Peter is standing on the sidewalk with one hand braced against his side, the other trying to waive off offers of help from the small crowd of onlookers that have gathered. The police have arrived by that point as well, manhandling the webbed-up perp into custody and probably wondering how long it’ll take to get the gun down from where it’s stuck to the wall about 20 feet up.

“Oh hey, Happy Thanksgiving Mr. Stark,” Peter says when Tony lands next to him. He sounds a little out of it.

“Hey kid. What happened to spending a quiet night watching movies with your aunt?”

“I did that.”

“And?” Tony prods, gently prying Peter’s hand away from his side so he can take a look.

“And then - and then she went to bed, and I was bored,” Peter wheezes out.

“Yeah, because I’ve heard getting shot in the pre-Black Friday rush is highly entertaining.”

“I didn’t -”

“Nuh uh, exnay on the talking. I want one-word answers from you here on out. Doctor’s orders.”

“You’re - not a doctor.”

“I have a Ph D. That counts. Besides, what did I just say about you and one word answers?”

Peter tips his head back. “Honorary.”

“Brat,” Tony says. 

FRIDAY has already alerted the med team at the tower. It’s only a couple minutes flying time, if Tony can carry the kid there without making things worse. 

“If I pick you up are you gonna pass out on me?”

Peter shakes his head.

“Are you gonna hork up on me?”

“Um. Possibly.”

He’ll take the risk. Tony pulls the kid in close and moments later they’re off, shooting towards the tower at top speed. Peter makes it without vomiting, which is something, but he does pass out halfway there, going suddenly slack in Tony’s arms in a way that sends panic shooting through Tony’s chest. 

The team of medics and doctors descend on the kid as soon as they land, cutting the suit off of him and turning him on one side to examine the wound from the front and back. Tony stands off to the side, feeling generally useless and wondering why the hell he hasn’t been able to talk Peter into some kind of bullet-proof panelling in the suit before now.

Peter regains consciousness at some point, disoriented and blinking at the bright lights of the infirmary. 

The wound is a relatively clean through and through, the doctors tell him, which dulls Tony’s general panic only by a minute degree. The kid’s lost some blood, but his healing mojo is already hard at work stitching him back together from the inside out, so all the docs really do is patch him up real nice and give him a heavy dose of pain meds before hustling out of the room.

“Oh wow, that’s really nice,” Peter comments, presumably in reference to the pain meds, his head lolling back against the pillows.

“Super strength, special order just for you.”

Peter blinks.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Tony isn’t entirely sure what the kid asking there - whether the drugs really are super strength or whether they were in stock specifically for Peter. The answer to both is ‘yes’, so it probably doesn’t matter either way.

“Hey, how do I - ” Peter starts, hand slapping around on the bed in search of something. “I need to sit up.”

“Uh, no you don’t.”

“I gotta call May. She’s gonna freak if anyone got a video, if she doesn’t see me she’s gonna think - ” 

Peter starts to struggle his way back up to sitting, until Tony reaches out and grabs him by the shoulders. 

“Okay, okay.” Tony grabs the bedside remote and hits the control to raise the upper half of the bed. “Chill out there, Terminator. We’ll talk to May. But I don’t think a video call from a hospital bed is going to reassure her all that much.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Would a regular phone call work?”

“Maybe?”

Tony hesitates, hand clenching on the guardrail of the bed. Maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for May to find out anyway. Peter is only 19 and he’s just taken a bullet. 

“You know I can send a car, right? She can be here in 30 minutes, tops. Hell, I can fly a quinjet over and have her here in 10, if you want.”

Peter shakes his head, adamant.

“You can’t.”

“Pretty sure I can. Trust me, kid, I’ve sent quinjets out on far flimsier errands.”

“No. It’s - ” Peter swallows. “It’s not about the plane. It’s how Ben... I can’t let her see this and think that - ”

Well, shit. 

Tony bends down and grabs the kid’s phone out of the holster pocket in his boot and passes it over. Peter takes it with a surprisingly steady hand and a quiet 'thanks.'

Tony shoves his hands in his pockets and turns away, taking a couple steps over towards the door. He doesn’t want to leave completely, in case the kid needs backup during the call. But he tries his best to tune out the low murmur of Peter’s voice - the tone of it impressively steady, considering how doped up the kid must be.

He hears Peter end the call, and the long sigh of relief that comes immediately after.

Tony turns around, eyebrow raised in question, but Peter is leaning back with his eyes closed, one arm wrapped protectively around his abdomen, the other still loosely clutching his phone. Tony dims the lights and leaves.

*

“How’s he looking, Doc? Critical?” 

Doctor Bennett ignores him, which, rude, and Peter rolls his eyes. Tony’s okay with all of it though, because Peter is sitting up without assistance and there’s color in his face that definitely wasn’t there last night.

“Very impressive,” Bennett tells Peter as he examines the wounds, front and back, and Peter accepts the praise with a kind of awkward half-grin.

Bennett re-dresses the wounds and leaves Peter with explicit instructions to take it easy until he’s fully healed.

“Seriously though, how are you feeling?” Tony asks.

Peter shrugs. “Kinda sore, but I’m okay.”

“Okay enough to do some work?”

“I got shot like ten hours ago, you’re gonna make me work?”

“Yep.”

“That’s pretty harsh, man. I think that violates OSHA or something.”

“No, you getting shot on the job is what violates OSHA. C’mon, up and at ‘em, we’ve got a bulletproof Spandex to engineer.”

Peter’s eyes widen. “Woah wait, is bulletproof Spandex a thing?”

“Not yet it isn’t. Hence,” Tony says impatiently, waving towards the door.

Peter point blank refuses a wheelchair when Tony tries to suggest it. He does accept Tony’s help though, only a little bit grudgingly looping one arm over Tony’s shoulder to lean on as they head down to the lab. Doc Bennett is right; Peter’s superhealing has done a damn fine job stitching him back together. He may be moving a little slowly, but he is moving.

The problem with bullet-proofing Peter's suit is the same one that's existed from the very beginning. Anything too stiff or too heavy is going to impact his range of motion and ability to turn on a dime, making him clumsy in the air and robbing him of one his most critical advantages in a fight; he doesn't move like anyone or anything else out there. It's the reason Peter's rejected the ultra-thin kevlar-like plating time and time again, and the reason Tony is determined now to come at the problem from a completely different angle.

Peter manages to put up a pretty good show of keeping up for about an hour, but pretty soon he’s visibly flagging, slumped over on his desk half-asleep. 

Maybe dragging him out of the infirmary hadn’t been the best idea after all, but Tony hadn’t particularly enjoyed the sight of him laid up in a hospital bed. He’ll take Peter falling asleep on him in the lab over that any day of the week.

“Why don’t you take a break?” Tony suggests.

“We gotta invent the fabric thing,” Peter mumbles, straightening up slightly.

“And we will. It’s gonna go a little faster if you’re not drooling all over the holosuite though.”

Peter wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, frowning. If he were any more than barely conscious he definitely would’ve known the drool comment wasn’t literal. Tony grabs the back of his lab stool and rolls him over to the couch. Peter sort of half-heartedly objects, but doesn’t try to stop him.

“You. There, now.”

To Tony's surprise, Peter actually goes.

*

Peter spends most of the rest of the day on the couch, napping on and off, although after much complaining Tony relents and allows him a tablet to work on. Doctor Bennett stops by at some point to check up on Peter and reprimand Tony for springing the invalid from his hospital bed early.

“What? He’s resting,” Tony objects.

“Keep going and he’s going to turn into just as bad a patient as you are.”

“I’ve never even been your patient.”

“And there’s a good reason for that,” Doc Bennett comments.

“I don’t want to interrupt, but am I okay? I mean I feel pretty okay, just tired, but I didn't know if I should be worried still.”

Peter has his shirt pulled up and the tape peeled back over the wound on his abdomen. The still-healing skin looks pink and tender in a way that both fascinates and also vaguely creeps Tony out. He doesn’t want to treat the kid like some kind of science experiment, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t wish he could carefully document every minute step of the recovery, bank that knowledge for some later date, when it might (but god he hopes not) come in handy.

“All signs point to you being fine,” Bennett says, “just take it easy for a few days, if you can manage that.”

“And maybe don’t stop to try to negotiate next time someone points a gun at you,” Tony adds. Peter rolls his eyes.

“Yes, that would also be a good idea. Your healing abilities are impressive, but you were also incredibly lucky.”

Peter hunches down slightly, chin dropping, and Tony can’t help but think of the kid’s uncle. 

“I know,” Peter says.

“Good. Then I’ll consider my job done here.”

Bennett packs up his medical doodads and leaves the lab. Peter video calls May sometime after lunch, promising to be home in time for dinner. Or as Peter refers to it, Tofur-geddon Part Two. Tony doesn’t ask.

He does ask when Peter wants to head back to Boston though, once Peter is off the phone.

“Um, Saturday sometime - if that’s okay? I don’t know when you were planning to go back, but I have class Monday, and I’ve also got that problem set to finish, so I was sort of planning to do that Sunday.”

“I probably won’t be heading up ‘til Monday night anyway, so go whenever you want.” Tony stops for a moment, trying to work out the odds that his next gambit is going to work. Probably not, but might as well try. “I’ll bring the new suit up with me, I should have something workable by then. Think you can hold off on the Spider-Manning for three days?”

Peter, as predicted, dithers on giving Tony an actual answer. “If something happens...”

“If something happens, you call me and I - as the only one here not currently recovering from a _bullet wound_ \- will suit up and fly out to deal with it. Besides, didn’t the doc literally just tell you to take it easy for a few days?”

“Fine.”

“Fine meaning - ?”

“Fine, meaning I promise not to out patrolling.”

It doesn’t escape Tony’s notice that Peter isn’t quite promising to actually stay out of trouble; he’s just promising not to go out looking for it on purpose. Given the kid’s luck, he’s probably guaranteed to find it regardless.

And given how stubborn Peter is, it’s also pretty much guaranteed that the promise not to go patrolling is about as big a concession as Tony is likely to get on that front.

“Sunday night,” Tony finally says, after a long pause.

“Huh?”

“Sunday night. We’ll fly back together.”

Tony doesn’t have a lab in Boston, although it’s starting to look like maybe he should - at least a little satellite kind of deal, if for no other reason than to give Peter a place to patch up his suits or work on upgrades that isn’t a tricked-out MIT dorm room.

Right now that’s beside the point though, which is that Peter’s old suit is currently lying in about three jagged pieces on the infirmary floor somewhere, and there’s not a chance in hell Tony is about to let the kid go back to Boston without A: a new bullet-resistant suit, and B: near instantaneous backup in the form of Tony himself. And also maybe a suit that doesn't need to be shoved in a backpack for stealthy transport would be a plus, too.

“Okay,” Peter says. “Thanks, Mr. Stark.”

Tony isn’t sure what he’s being thanked for, there - probably not the babysitting gig though. Probably he means the new suit, or at least the promise of a new suit.

“And I’m gonna expect your problem set to be immaculate. I better be able to frame that thing and hang it on the wall for future generations to gaze at in wonder.”

Peter stares at him for a beat. “Wow, I would be really worried right now if I thought you actually did any of the grading for that class.”

It would almost be worth offering to do one round of grading just to wipe the self-satisfied expression off of Peter’s face. Almost.

But not quite.  
  



	5. Chapter 5

Peter doesn’t find out about the pictures until he’s back in Boston three days later, when MJ texts him about it, expressing her typical level of concern couched in sarcasm.

> _ Aww look at you two _
> 
> _ hope you’re not dead or anything _

He doesn’t understand the first message until he opens the link she sent along with it, which - oh god. 

At the time Peter had mostly been focused on staying upright, trying to figure out a way to make a graceful exit from the scene without falling on his face in front of all those people. But then Mr. Stark had shown up and gotten him out of there, and everything had been okay.

The pictures make it look like something else. 

Peter’s not even sure how, really - he’s still obviously hurt, but something about the way he’s leaning forward on the chest of the Iron Man armor and the way Mr. Stark’s unmasked head is tipped down to talk in his ear… it looks different. It looks like something it isn’t.

It looks even more like something it isn’t in the next photo, which shows them even closer together, one of Mr. Stark’s arms wrapped tightly around Peter, the other palm pointing straight down, preparing to take off. Peter has his arms wrapped around Mr. Stark’s armor and his head tucked down under Mr. Stark’s chin, the eyes of his suit closed in what looks like relief.

There are a couple other blurry pics of them in the air together, little more than a dark smudge followed by a bright stream of light. 

There’s also a few other pictures of he and Mr. Stark together - or rather, Spider-Man and Iron Man together. There’s Peter swinging alongside Mr. Stark as he flies down Sixth Ave, and the two of them eating burgers perched on top of the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows, Peter’s mask pulled up to just under his nose so he can eat. 

It’s not news that Spider-Man and Iron Man know each other, of course. But it _ is _news if it looks like (or could be made to look like) Iron Man and Spider-Man were something more than crime-fighting colleagues. 

Peter texts MJ back:

> _ I’m fine, thanks for your concern :P _

To which she replies:

> _ yeah I figured, since sugar daddy had you _
> 
> _ glad you’re okay though, dork _

_ He’s not _ \- Peter starts to type out, then deletes it. He knows she’s joking. Well, mostly joking. She kind of gives him this look every time he tries to argue with her about it; Peter can almost see it now even though she’s currently three thousand miles away.

Ned, on the other hand, seems to think the whole thing is awesome:

> _ PEOPLE THINK YOU’RE DATING TONY STARK DUDE _

It’s not just the Daily News, either. A ton of websites and forums have picked up the thread, all of which Ned sends to him in a gleeful flurry of messages. People have put together timelines and photo compilations, tracking back every documented interaction between Spider-Man and Iron Man. 

Peter buries his face in his hands. He’s already alone in his dorm room, so it doesn’t really accomplish much.

*

Gwen is at least sympathetic when he runs into her at the library that afternoon, although it’s for all the wrong reasons.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anyone more in need of a Vermonster and a big spoon,” is the first thing she says when she sees him.

“Huh?”

“Seriously though, have you been eating? You look all pale.”

Probably because he was shot in the abdomen like four days ago, not that he can say that. He’s basically healed by now anyway, but the healing had definitely sapped a lot of his energy.

“I’m fine,” he says.

Gwen nods, weirdly solemn. “Of course you are.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?”

“Post breakup binging. What did you think I was talking about?”

“I honestly have no idea.”

“Professor Stark?” She says, eyebrows raised. “Professor Stark and a certain very well muscled masked vigilante by the name of Spider-Man? Ringing any bells?”

Peter tries very hard to look like it rings exactly zero bells, although he can’t help but feel a little flash of pride at being described as well-muscled. _ Very _ well muscled, even. 

He shakes his head, and Gwen frowns.

“Kinda figured you’d be heartbroken. You really do look kind of sick. I know we’ve been joking around about it a lot, but if you need someone to talk to - ”

“No,” Peter is quick to cut in. “No, it’s really not anything like that. I caught a cold over break, so I’ve just been trying to sleep a lot, and now I’ve gotta catch up on school stuff this week.”

“Right.”

She doesn’t entirely look like she believes him, but at least she’s stopped looking at him like he’s a puppy with a broken tail. Well, sort of.

Class on Tuesday goes pretty much like normal, at least until Audrey raises her hand near the end of the lecture.

“I know it’s off topic, Professor, but is Spider-Man okay?” she asks, anxiously.

Peter freezes in place but Mr. Stark, smooth as silk, doesn’t even glance Peter’s way. 

Instead, he smiles. 

“Spidey’s doing just fine, I promise.”

Peter relaxes, his relief at the moment passing blending in well enough with the obvious relief from the rest of the class at the good news.

When class is over, Mr. Stark catches Peter’s eye and gives a tiny shake of his head, his fingers twitching towards the door. Apparently Peter shouldn’t stick around after.

The reason why becomes clear when Peter steps out of the building - reporters are camped out near every exit, clearly wanting to grab a soundbite from Mr. Stark when he comes out. Peter slips off to the side and pulls out his phone, pretending to dick around on it.

He doesn’t even need to look up to know when Mr. Stark makes it outside, because the reporters start shouting questions almost immediately, one overlapping another to create a nearly incomprehensible din.

“How long have the two of you been - ”

“Is it true that - ”

“No one has seen Spider-Man for four days now, what can you tell us about - ”

Mr. Stark cuts them off. “Spider-Man is doing fine. Since that’s the only non-ridiculous question I’ve heard, that’s the only one I’m answering right now.”

Peter forces himself not to look up, but Mr. Stark’s tone of voice is nowhere near as warm as it’d been in class. He can guess the man isn’t smiling this time.

Peter slinks back to his dorm feeling awful. He hadn’t really thought about how this whole thing would play out for Mr. Stark. Peter didn’t have to deal with it, not really, since it’s not like people knew who he was. But everyone knew Mr. Stark was Iron Man, so of course he was going to get hit with all the questions.

He gets a text from Mr. Stark not long after that though:

> _ Hope you don’t have plans tonight. I’m sending a car. _

Peter reads the text, frowning. Then he reads it again. If they were just having dinner, Peter could go to the hotel like he’s done before. Although maybe not, since there were sure to be reporters camped out there now too.

But a minute after the first text comes through Peter gets another one.

> _ Bring the new suit. _

Bring the suit? Okay, so obviously not dinner. Peter is distracted all through his afternoon lecture, doodling in the margins of his notebook instead of taking notes, which he’ll probably regret later given that finals are coming up really soon.

The car that picks him up is just a regular looking black sedan. The driver isn’t anyone Peter recognizes, and doesn’t seem to care who Peter is or where he’s going - which is good, because Peter doesn’t actually know where it is that he’s going. At least, not until he realizes they must be heading towards Logan. Why did Mr. Stark want to meet him at the airport?

Maybe it was just a way to avoid the press. They probably couldn’t camp out on the tarmac the same way they could outside a hotel lobby or a campus building.

Or maybe it was a mission.

Peter fidgets nervously in the car as they pull up to the private hangar. 

There’s no one around. Peter climbs the stairs of the ramp and steps on board the plane. He’s actually never been on one of Mr. Stark’s planes on his own before - usually Happy or Mr. Stark himself was there with him. For some reason it feels weird to be the only one aboard. Was he being sent somewhere alone?

He pulls out his phone, fruitlessly checking for any new notifications even though he knows he hasn’t gotten anything. He stares down at it, thumb poised over the screen.

_ I’m on the plane, _ he ends up sending, feeling a little bit like an idiot. Mr. Stark probably already knows that, but Peter doesn’t know what else to say.

> _Good. Be there soon. _

Okay, so Mr. Stark is apparently joining him on the flight. Good to know. Peter has about a hundred other questions, but he guesses they can wait until the man actually gets here. 

Plus, he’s pretty sure Mr. Stark must be fed up with endless questions after the day he’s had.

It turns out that Mr. Stark has questions of his own for Peter, when he gets on board.

“Up to you how you want to play this,” Mr. Stark says. “Grass roots deal, do a quick swing around the city and rely on social media to spread the word for you, or there’s some kind of charity gala thing Pepper found, you can put in an appearance there if you’re not up to the whole acrobatics bit just yet.”

“Huh?” Peter says, eloquently.

“Press coverage, kid. Figured we can kill two birds with one stone - prove that Spider-man is alive and well to stop the catastrophizing, and throw people off the scent since Peter Parker is in Boston right now, at least as far as anyone knows.”

Duh. Peter making an appearance in New York would probably go a long way towards tamping down the media frenzy centered on Mr. Stark. And the bit about Spider-man showing up in New York is a really good point.

“I can swing around,” Peter offers.

Mr. Stark looks him over with a critical eye. He looks at Peter’s abdomen pretty intently, even though it’s not like there’s anything to see - the bandages are gone, so there’s not even the bulge of a bandage underneath his shirt to hide now. 

“You sure?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Peter pulls his shirt up to show him. There’s not even a scar left anymore, like it never even happened. To Peter’s surprise, Mr. Stark leans forward to take a closer look, reaching out to trail his fingertips over the newly-healed skin.

Peter sucks in a breath at the light touch.

Mr. Stark freezes, looking up. 

“Sore?”

Peter shakes his head. He is, just a little bit, but it’s no big deal. “Ticklish,” he explains.

One corner of Mr. Stark’s mouth quirks up in a grin as he swipes his thumb back and forth over Peter’s side, and the ticklish feeling intensifies into something warm and overwhelming.

“What about the other side?” Mr. Stark says.

Peter twists around in his seat to show him, hiking up his shirt so the no-longer-existent wound on his back is visible. He feels Mr. Stark’s fingertips graze over the skin there as well, followed by a soft huff of breath against the side of his cheek.

Mr. Stark clears his throat. “Good.”

Peter turns back around, lowering his shirt awkwardly as Mr. Stark shifts away, leaning back in his seat.

“What about - you know, the other stuff people are saying?” Peter asks.

“Other stuff?”

“The - “ Peter stalls out, unsure of how to phrase it. The awkward pause seems to give it away, though.

“Ah, that other stuff,” Mr. Stark says, waving a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. That stuff’ll blow over sooner or later. It always does.”

Peter nods, trying to pretend he’s just as blasé about it as Mr. Stark apparently is. He must not do a very good job at it though, because Mr. Stark’s brow quirks downward.

“Does it bother you?”

“No! No, it’s fine. I’ve just never had people writing stuff like that about me before. I guess you’d get used to it after a while though.”

“Trust me, it may seem like a big deal right now, but give it a couple days. Someone will snap a photo of me standing next to someone outside a hotel lobby and that’ll eat up the news cycle soon enough.”

Peter feels a little bit like an idiot. Of course that’s how it went; he already knew that.

People at school talked about Peter and Mr. Stark just because Mr. Stark knew his name and they went out to lunch together every once in a while. There was probably gossip and wild speculation about literally everyone the man interacted with - it just came with the territory when you were as well-known as Mr. Stark was. 

“Trying to address that kind of stuff directly usually only adds fuel to the fire. But if it bugs you and you really are up to it, let people get some pics of you taking a beautiful girl out for a ride.”

Peter almost chokes. 

“Um - ” 

“Not that kind of ride, kid. I meant a swing around the city.”

“Oh. Right, yeah. That makes sense.” 

Peter opts not to mention that he has zero interest in doing either of those things, even if it would ease some of the media speculation about their alter egos.

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to give you a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do style lecture about how the internet is forever and why that’s relevant when you’re considering letting someone take photos of you in compromising positions?”

“No, but… can you give me that lecture anyway? I want to hear how it goes.”

Mr. Stark actually laughs - but he does end up giving Peter the lecture, in a very roundabout and somewhat mortifying way. Peter isn’t sure he’s actually learned anything by the end of it, but he also doesn’t particularly care.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I wanted to add a quick note here that the [Equality Auction](https://equalityauction.dreamwidth.org/) is going on right now to raise money for BLM related organizations. Bidding closes this Friday, June 26th at 11:59PM EDT. (Also, a kind anon on FFA put together a list of authors and creators offering Peter/Tony if you're looking specifically for that [here](https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/432840.html?thread=2573263816#cmt2573263816), although there's also a TON of other fandoms and pairings on offer if you look through the auction and buy-it-now posts.)

“Deep space telemetry?” Peter asks, sounding somewhat doubtful.

Tony doesn’t actually remember what he told the registrar about Peter’s IAP course, come to think of it. He’s fairly certain he left FRIDAY in charge of bullshitting the specifics, but sure, deep space telemetry sounds about right. 

It’s even somewhat close to the truth, in a way.

“What, did you have something better in mind?” Tony says.

“Um, no. I guess not? It just seems kinda random.”

“It’ll probably seem a little less random once we get there.”

“...get where?”

It’s a valid question. One that Tony would be disinclined to answer, but some niggling part of his brain is insistent that it’s probably a bad idea to zip the kid away to a top secret base for three weeks without at least some kind of warning first.

“Fury’s got this new base he’s been jonesing about. I figured it’d be marginally less obnoxious of a trip if I dragged you along with me.”

Peter’s eyes go almost comically wide. “A new SHIELD base?”

“Mm, sorta. It’s not technically SHIELD anymore, it’s something else. You know Fury’s always got some new plan up his sleeve.”

“Woah.”

“So anyway, pack a toothbrush and your Iron Spider suit, ‘cause we’re gonna be gone for a couple weeks.”

“Um.” Peter pauses. “I know it’s probably a super secret base and everything, but is there gonna be phone service?”

Oh, right. May. 

Then again, Peter is eighteen now. Technically and legally an adult. Surely Tony doesn’t need to get a signed permission slip to take the kid on a little superhero-related field trip, does he? What would something like that even look like?

> _I, May Parker, do hereby permit one __Tony Stark_ _to take my nephew,  
__Peter Benjamin Parker (who is definitely not Spider-Man), to an undisclosed  
location in the planet’s exosphere from __January 4th_ _\- __January 28th, 2021__._

“Of course,” Tony says. “It’s a global defense base, not the Raft. We’ll have comms up the wazoo. You could probably butt-dial Thor from bridge.” 

Whoops. Okay, so Tony had sort of wanted the specifics to be a surprise, but there’s a reason Peter remains his favorite student, because based on Peter’s reaction he definitely hasn’t missed Tony’s use of the word _bridge_. Tony can practically see the lightbulb go off over the kid’s head, the way his face lights up.

“It’s a ship? A _space_ship?”

“Technically speaking, regular ships have bridges too - ”

“I’m spending wintersession _in space_,” Peter says, seemingly to himself. “Wait, it is actually in space, right? It’s not like, still in construction on the ground? Right?”

“Assuming Fury didn’t fat-finger the coordinates he sent me, yes, it’s in space.” Besides, if the thing wasn’t already in orbit, Tony sure as shit will be getting it up there, now.

“Oh my god, that’s so cool.”

“Deep space telemetry looking a little more attractive now?”

“It was plenty cool before, Mr. Stark, but I mean, _yeah_.”

“Good.”

*

To be fair, Peter isn’t wrong - the base is pretty cool. 

Not that Tony plans on vocalizing that thought anytime soon, since Peter is fanboying more than enough for the both of them, but there it is.

Peter walks around filming the whole place, nearly sending Fury into paroxysms of rage, by the looks of things. It takes a little while, but Peter seems to pick up on Fury’s less-than-enthusiastic response to the vlogging.

Eventually.

“Is it - should I not be filming?” Peter asks in a whisper, lowering his phone as Fury steps away to talk to Hill about something. “I wasn’t gonna show it to anyone.”

Liar. Peter was almost definitely going to show it to Ned, Tony is willing to bet on it. Maybe that blond friend of his from class, too. Casey? Stacey? Something like that.

“Nah, go for it. I don’t want to see any of this on Youtube later though, capisce?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Capisce.”

Fury ropes them into helping out with some sensor upgrades on the outside of the base, which Tony saw coming from miles away. (Literally, miles away.) Peter is on cloud nine at the very idea, at least if the amount of excited chatter coming over the comms is anything to go by - although when the outer airlock door finally opens, he goes completely and uncharacteristically silent.

“Kid, talk to me. What’s going on?”

No answer. Peter’s vitals are slightly elevated, but nowhere near what Tony or FRIDAY have classified as the danger zone. 

“Pete!”

“Wha- huh?”

“Did you just _nod off?_ Sorry, was I boring you with the whole space walk thing?”

“No! No. I’m sorry Mr. Stark. It’s not that. It’s just - I can’t hear _anything_.” Peter waves an arm out at the open space in front of him, then has to reach back to brace himself on the ship as he starts to spin lazily in the air.

Huh, okay actually that makes sense. Tony probably should’ve seen this coming. Peter is used to some level of background noise all around him, much more so than any regular person. Cars passing by on the street outside, fridges running, TVs, radios, and the murmur of nearby (and not-so-nearby) conversations. This must be a pretty new experience for him, even aside from the whole zero-gravity-holy-crap-_space_ thing. 

On his HUD, Tony can see the kid’s heartbeat tick up another notch.

“Is it freaking you out?” he asks.

“Um. A little, yeah.”

“Take a breath. You can still hear everything going on on the base, right? Try to focus on that.” 

_Try to focus on Fury and Hill_, he doesn’t say - but wants to. _Get a lead on what else they’re up to out here._

Peter seems to calm down a bit after a few minutes have passed.

Tony opts not to mention that his own first experiences in space had been just as terror inducing - fueling nightmares and panic attacks for months afterward, or that he’s glad that Peter’s first time up here is planned, controlled. Safe. Better that the kid got a good handle on it now rather than mid-battle in a suit with a dying power source, or facing down a literal armada of invading alien ships. 

After a few initial fumbles, Peter takes to zero gravity like - well, it seems insufficient to say ‘like a fish to water’ but it’s true. He cartwheels over the bow presumably just because he can, using the arm of Tony’s suit as an anchor to swing himself back around to land in a crouch on the other side of the sensor array.

“Show off,” Tony mutters.

Peter shrugs. Tony can’t see his expression through the mask, but he’d be willing to bet the kid is grinning ear to ear.

“Hey, can I test how my webbing does in space?”

Fury probably won’t like it, but what Fury doesn’t know won’t hurt them. 

“Go for it,” Tony says, demagnetizing one of the hand tools he’s holding and letting it drift away a couple feet to use as a target.

Peter shoots a web to catch it, his aim dead on, but instead of the tool springing back to his hand with a tug like it normally would, it stays exactly where it is. Tony reaches up to tap at the rope of webbing and finds it solidified, like spun glass.

And much like glass when exposed to extreme temperatures and a jarring external stimulus, it shatters.

“Shit,” Tony swears. “Kid, back up a bit.”

Peter’s suit is airtight, obviously, as is his own, but that doesn’t mean that thousands of minuscule shards of solidified webbing can’t do damage to the external joints, not to mention the exterior of the base itself. Tony maneuvers himself down between the glittering cloud of debris and the base and fires his blaster outward, vaporizing most of the particles and sending the rest hurtling away from the base.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark. I didn't think it would - ”

“Don’t apologize. That’s exactly the kind of thing you want to test out now instead of in the middle of a fight.”

Peter doesn’t reply right away.

“You think I’m gonna have to fight in space someday?”

Another mistake. Tony hadn’t meant to make it sound like that: inevitable, even if he’s all too aware that it might well be, but... eight years ago aliens had open a portal directly over downtown Manhattan. Five years ago, Ultron had sent an entire city hurtling up into the atmosphere and then back down again. He doesn’t want Peter to be scared, but he also doesn’t want him to be caught completely by surprise.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I figure it’s better to plan ahead.”

When they get back inside, Peter’s face is flushed and his eyes are a little wild with giddiness and unspent adrenaline, searching Tony’s face for what he assumes is approval.

It’s a struggle not to grin back at the kid, but he manages. “Good job out there.”

“Thanks!”

“You mean _good job_ treating my multibillion-dollar global security base like a jungle gym,” Fury intones, wryly.

Peter looks chastened; he doesn’t know how to read Fury yet. 

Tony shrugs it off. “Yeah, and?”

Fury’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t take the bait.

“We’ve got bunks set up for you on the lower level.”

“Bunks?” Peter and Tony both ask, in very different tones of voice. Peter, excited. Tony, not so much.

“Listen, I appreciate the thought and all,” Tony says. “I don’t think this should come as a surprise to anyone that I don’t do bunk beds.”

Fury turns out to be messing with them, which Tony assumes Fury thinks he deserves for some reason or another. It doesn’t much matter; Tony’s already outfitted the quinjet they took up here with everything he considers to be the basics for himself. Space station or not, he prefers not to couch surf, as a general rule. 

It’s not exactly extravagant, but it’ll do.

Peter, on the other hand, seems pretty stoked about his little closet of a room on the base. It’s probably not that much smaller than a freshman single anyway, honestly.

Tony really needs to start looking at apartments in Cambridge for next year.

*

“Am I supposed to writing a paper?” Peter asks out of the blue, a week in.

“Right now? No, you’re supposed to be helping me debug the automatic pointing control system.”

“Not right now, like, in general. For the course.”

“What course?”

Peter looks nonplussed. “The IAP course?”

Oh. That thing. “I’m gonna go with no, unless you really want to. Any paper you would write about being up here is probably above your clearance level anyway.”

“Uhh.”

“But go for it, if you’re feeling inspired.”

“Shouldn’t we have some kind of coursework, so MIT has something on file?”

“You’re gonna make me grade a paper about deep space telemetry, aren’t you?”

Peter shrugs, biting his lip. “I’m getting _credit_ for this.”

“Would you prefer to take an NR on it?”

“No! But... I’m gonna write the paper. And I think that means you have to grade it.”

“I knew there had to be a catch in this plan somewhere. Just so you know, I’m docking you half a letter grade for making me do homework.”

“Hey!”

Tony would feel worse about how affronted Peter looks by the very suggestion, except it’s a damn IAP course. It’s pass/fail anyway, and he has no doubt Peter will earn a passing grade.

*

Another week in, and Tony is growing antsy. He’s wandered all over the base, inside and out, nosed his way through all of the schematics and systems. Strengths, weaknesses. Ways to disable the various defensive capabilities, should that ever become necessary. Peter is either picking up on his impatience, or maybe the kid is just as eager to get outside - somewhere that isn’t a sealed metal boat, floating through space.

At the moment, Peter is lounging in the co-captain’s chair in the front of the quinjet, feet kicked up on the dash. The kid cranes his neck around to watch Tony pour himself a drink.

“I can’t believe you put a minibar on your spaceship,” Peter says.

“Want something?”

Peter’s eyes narrow. “Maybe.”

“Maybe isn’t a yes.”

“It’s not a no either, Professor.”

Tony mentally deducts another half-letter grade. Then immediately adds it back.

“This isn’t peer pressure, kid. I’m not gonna chant _chug, chug, chug_ at you.”

“I want to try it, but not straight up like yours. It smells really strong,” Peter says, nose wrinkling. “Do you have something to mix it with?”

“In fact I do, in the minibar I so presciently thought to install right here on my spaceship.”

Peter rolls his eyes. 

A jack and coke (heavy on the coke) seems like a reasonable enough introduction to underage drinking. Tony is still somewhat baffled that Peter seems to have made it through an entire semester in Cambridge without getting shitfaced, even by accident. Tony himself had made it a grand total of three days. 

Peter takes a cautious sip and looks surprised. “Oh. It’s good!”

“I’ll try not to be insulted by that.”

“It was a compliment.” Peter takes another, less cautious sip, and swallows. “This is the best mixed drink I’ve ever had,” he says, generously.

“Stop while you’re ahead, kid. Hey, how’d the new web fluid tests go?”

“Better. Still not there yet.”

Tony takes the captain’s chair, stretching out his legs and balancing his glass on the armrest. The quinjet wasn’t really set up for lounging, but it’s not like there’s space for for another seating area, not unless he stoops to the level of a futon-like setup - or god forbid, a Murphy bed. Peter would probably think it was awesome.

Peter had thought bunk beds were awesome too. 

Sometimes Peter’s opinions and insights were invaluable. Sometimes not so much.

But if Tony is going to be coming back up here anytime soon, he’s going to need something a little more comfortable and functional than the current setup. He sketches out a few ideas in 3D, cycling back and forth between them to tease out the details, pros and cons.

“That one,” Peter says, pointing.

“Why?”

“Because it looks the coolest.”

“You lose a lot of livable space to the tapering,” Tony says, tapping at the ship design and flicking it over to Peter’s tablet.

Peter turns it over in his hands, then looks around the quinjet.

“You need more space?”

“Need? Probably not. Want... yes.”

Peter tinkers around with the design, duplicating it, trying out different versions as Tony continues to work on his own. 

Peter sends two versions back over to Tony and then steals another to play with. His options are noticeably heavy on engine power and light on space. Tony could swear one of them looks like a shrunk down Millennium Falcon. Which, all due respect to Joe Johnston, but no.

“You could’ve named this course ‘totally hypothetical spaceship design’, you know,” Peter suggests. “Then I could’ve submitted a paper on work I’d actually done, rather than writing about something completely different.”

“Okay - one, you assigned yourself that paper, kid, so don’t expect any sympathy from this direction. Two, please tell me you don’t actually think anyone hearing about a three week course in an undisclosed location _with me_ called ‘totally hypothetical spaceship design’ wouldn’t immediately assume you were talking about real, actual spaceships?”

“Right, because calling the it ‘deep space telemetry’ is sure to throw everyone off the scent.”

“Hey it worked on you, didn’t it?”  
  



End file.
